Grant to cut farm nutrient runoff aimed at shrinking Gulf dead zone
Farmers in Morehouse Parish in north Louisiana will be taught new ways to reduce nutrient runoff while also improving their ability to raise cash crops, thanks to a $1.4 million The grant to the Gulf of Mexico Alliance, a consortium of five Gulf Coast states, aims to reduce farm nutrient runoff in the northernmost parts of the Bayou Lafourche watershed in Louisiana. The project will involve farmland in the Upper Bayou Galion and Bayou Coulee and will run through 2026. Farm runoff containing nitrogen and phosphorus nutrients can cause eutrophication in rivers and streams and hypoxia in the Gulf, which is the result of nutrients feeding blooms of algae that die and sink to the bottom of the waterways.
Published : a month ago by Mark Schleifstein in Environment
The grant to the Gulf of Mexico Alliance, a consortium of the five Gulf Coast states focused on Gulf environmental and economic issues, will be administered by the Morehouse Soil and Water Conservation District, the state Department of Environmental Quality and the Office of Soil and Water Conservation in the state Department of Agriculture and Forestry.
The project will involve farmland in the northernmost parts of the Bayou Lafourche watershed in Louisiana along Upper Bayou Galion and Bayou Coulee, and will run through 2026.
Farm runoff containing nitrogen and phosphorus nutrients can cause what is known as eutrophication in rivers and streams and hypoxia in the Gulf. Both are the result of nutrients feeding blooms of algae that die and sink to the bottom of the waterways, where their decomposition uses up oxygen.